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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Things were usually pretty busy around Lambdatron since there was a lot going on and sometimes there wasn’t enough staff or resources to go around. But that wasn’t the case all the time, and sometimes they hit a period when things were a little slower than normal. That didn’t mean that Jennifer didn’t have things to do in the first week after the Fourth of July; it just meant that she didn’t feel quite so rushed about it.
She was sitting at her desk wondering which pile of paperwork to attack next when Tanisha Chladek popped her head in the door. “Is it safe to interrupt you?” she asked in a teasing voice.
“At the moment, yes,” Jennifer laughed. Though she’d been able to bring under control some of her legendary fits of temper at being interrupted while concentrating on an engineering problem, it wasn’t perfect by any means. “You and Jon can come in if you’re wearing helmets and flak jackets.”
“Oh, Jon’s over in Building Seven trying to teach an intern about a couple of the less-known tricks of using AutoCad,” Tanisha replied as she stepped in the door. “I was in the area and thought I’d stick my nose in.”
Back in the days when Jon and Tanisha had first come to Lambdatron they had been a very close couple, very attached to each other. Perhaps it was because they felt it was the two of them against the world, but if someone saw one of them they could be pretty sure that the other one was somewhere close by unless a rest room was involved. They weren’t quite as bad these days, as every now and then one of them had to be someplace where the other wasn’t; when it happened it was still clear that neither of them liked it very much.
“Well, come on in, have a seat,” Jennifer replied. “I’m just trying to work my way ahead a little. I’m expecting Will to be back in the States in the next few days.”
“You are? That’s wonderful! When do you expect him?”
“We’re not sure. There’s some sort of scheduling problem,” she replied as Tanisha sat down in a chair on the far side of the desk. Jennifer thought she sat down a little gingerly. “Tanisha, are you all right?” she asked.
“Just a little stiff and sore,” her friend replied with an enigmatic smile. “Jon and I got a little too exuberant last night, and I’m paying the price today. But it was a lot of fun.”
Of course, Jennifer knew very well what Jon and Tanisha’s idea of fun was, and it occasionally ran to things that Jennlynn would never have considered doing with a client up at the Redlite. “Something kinky, I take it?”
“Well, yes,” the black girl giggled. “It’s nothing we haven’t done before, but it’s fun to do once in a while. I guess I strained against the ropes a little hard a few times when Jon was tickling me.”
A pretty good vision of what the two must have been doing filled Jennifer’s mind. “Weren’t you worried about waking Barbie up?” She knew their daughter had turned one over the weekend.
“Oh, not really. She was sound asleep, and besides I had a ball gag in my mouth.”
The vision in Jennifer’s mind took on a lot better focus. If she’d been tied to a bed and tickled mercilessly she would have been screaming her lungs out, ball gag or no ball gag. It was something she had heard of others doing from time to time, but she’d never been willing to give it a try herself. That was at least partly because there was no one but Will who she would have ever been willing to try it with, and they’d never had the opportunity.
Despite her vast store of experience at the Redlite Ranch, and reaching back before that as far as Caltech, Jennifer realized that her practical knowledge had limited bounds that did not reach very far into exotic things a couple could do together. There were a lot of things that were out of bounds with clients, even if they were to offer to roll off a big wad of cash to do them, and that was especially true at the Redlite. If a guy up there had asked to do something like Tanisha was hinting at he could get thrown out of the place on his butt. On the other hand, Jon and Tanisha were a very committed couple with a lot of trust for each other, so they could have fun doing things that Jennifer had never dreamed of experiencing.
One of the things that was very rare at the Redlite Ranch was kissing. It would be unfair to say that it just wasn’t done, but it was very rare that a girl would be willing to do it. Jennifer had counted herself in that number ever since her first shift near Carson City, when she’d learned that kissing went beyond mere sex to an intimacy that few prostitutes were willing to share. She could not have said the last time she’d kissed a man other than Will, but it might have been clear back at Caltech. Norma had once told her casually that the last time she’d kissed a man up there it had been in the parking lot and they’d both been fully dressed since it was the dead of winter.
Jennifer shook off her second or two of musing about what Jon and Tanisha must have been doing by asking, “Isn’t that sort of thing bad for the baby?” She knew that Tanisha was about five months pregnant with her second child, although it didn’t show much on her stocky frame.
“Not really. Jon is careful about that, although we probably are going to have to cut out a few things before much longer.”
“Well, I guess you’d know more about it than I would,” Jennifer replied. “I can barely imagine having kids, and that’s something Will and I just haven’t talked about. I suppose if we’re going to do it we ought to be thinking about it in the next few years, since I’m not getting any younger.”
“I don’t think Jon and I would have started this soon if Barbie hadn’t surprised us, but I’m glad that she did. There are times that Barbie has been a hassle, but we had Nanci with us last winter to help take the sting out of it. She was a huge help, but she’s on the river again this summer.”
“So how’s she getting along?”
“Pretty well, as far as we can tell and we don’t often hear much. When they get back to town they have other things to do, so most of what we hear is through Jon’s mother.”
“You know, I have difficulty imagining Nanci as a boatman in the Grand Canyon. I mean, I know her and like her, but after that trip Will and I made there a few years ago, she just doesn’t seem like the type.”
“Don’t let her fool you. You’d have to see her in a T-shirt and working out with weights to understand just how strong she is. I remember her from when we took her down the Canyon the first time two years ago, and she just was not the same person as she is today. Of course, she was still recovering from all the stuff she went through in Chicago, not that she talks about it very much.”
“I guess it was pretty bad,” Jennifer observed, resolving to not let Tanisha know that she knew a great deal more about it than she thought Tanisha did. Nanci still wasn’t one to talk about those days much, and she might never be, although her story was now in one of Norma’s case study files. It hadn’t been easy to talk her young friend into that.
“I get that impression, but like I said, she doesn’t talk about it much and I guess I can’t blame her.”
Resolving to steer the subject away from that area, Jennifer replied, “Well, if you talk to her tell her I’m looking forward to seeing her again. I’d invite you over to dinner sometime, but you know what my place is like and you know what kind of a cook I am.”
“When she gets back to school and has had time to settle in, we’ll have to have you over,” Tanisha laughed. “Of course, that’ll mean that she has to be the one to do the cooking instead of you or me. Is there any chance Will is going to be around?”
“I don’t know at this point. As far as I know he’s going to be back at Keesler, since his temporary duty was out of there. He guesses he’s going to be there another year or year and a half before he gets reassigned, and the odds are that he’ll be reassigned somewhere farther away rather than closer. But he’ll probably be around some, at least as long as I have Skyhook.”
“It’s a shame he has to be stationed so far away.”
“Well, I won’t be heading off to Mississippi every weekend, but I’ll probably be going there fairly often. At least it’ll be better than having him in the Persian Gulf. If he does get stationed far away, I could probably fly in at least once in a while to see him.”
“That’s got to be tough. It’s too bad you can’t be closer together.”
“Yeah, but that’s the way it is, I guess,” Jennifer said as the phone rang. “Damn thing,” she shook her head. “Sorry Tanisha, I probably ought to get this.”
“I need to be getting on my way, too. Catch you around,” she said as Jennifer picked up the phone.
“Jennifer Hoffman,” she said.
“Jennlynn, is that you?” she heard a familiar female voice say.
“Yes, I’m trying to get people to use my real name around here. Who is this?”
“This is Brenda Hodunk. I see you’ve left several messages and emails for me, but I wasn’t getting email from my public mailbox while I was in the Gulf.”
“I suspected that, which is why I wasn’t worrying about it too much,” Jennifer replied, recognizing the reporter/producer from World News Network who had put together The Fast World of Learjet Jenn. She had been trying to reach her for some time to talk to her about the idea of doing a more general report about prostitution, but hadn’t expected to hear from her for a while. “I saw you on TV a couple of times. You sure were in the thick of things, weren’t you?”
“A couple of times it got a little lively,” Brenda replied. “It’s still as big a mess there as it’s been for a couple of months, so I’m happy to be taking a break from it. So what’s on your mind?”
“Well, it’s sort of about the Fast World piece we did last fall.”
“That was a pretty good story for the WNN Newsmagazine. We got a lot of comment on it, and it was pretty controversial because of the subject matter. At least it got the attention of a few people. The last I knew they’re still running it as late-night filler once in a while. Has some problem come up?”
“No real problem, but a concern, maybe. I don’t want to get too deeply into the background, but some things have come up that have gotten me a little concerned that perhaps it put too good of a spin on prostitution. In fact, I’ve been a little worried that it was so good that perhaps it may have influenced some girls to get in the business when they shouldn’t have.”
“I suppose it could happen, although I haven’t heard of any, not that I would,” Brenda replied. “But yes, it was something of a concern to me when we did it, and I got some static around the office in the same vein. So what do you have in mind?”
“Well, I’ve been wondering if you might be interested in taking a more objective look at the whole subject, rather than just at my experiences in it. I mean, show the bad side as well as the good. It might give a more balanced view of the whole thing.”
“That might be interesting, although it might be hard to do. I mean, I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” Jennifer replied. “I have a friend who has been in most of the parts of the business at one time or another over the years, and now she’s working on her doctorate in psychology with it as her dissertation topic. She has a lot of contacts in the business as a result, and I’m sure she would be willing to put you in touch with people to interview. I mean everyone from beaten-down streetwalkers to high-end call girls.”
“That might be a possibility. Would this be something you would be involved in?”
“I’m sure it could be worked out however it happened to go. It might get a little bit more attention if my name was tacked onto it. I mean, Learjet Jenn, not Jennifer Hoffman.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that. I mean, to use you as a gateway behind the scenes, so to speak.”
“Something like that. When we did Fast World last fall I was just trying to set the record straight about me and some of the stories that have gone around. I’d hoped that would be more or less the end of Learjet Jenn, but it’s not working out that way, so I’ve changed my thinking on it a bit.”
“If you’re willing, I’m sure lending your name, at least Learjet Jenn’s name, to it would draw some more attention,” Brenda replied thoughtfully. “And by that, I mean attention around this office, and not just the public’s. I have to be honest, I’d have to sell a few people around here on it, but that’s not necessarily impossible. There’s no rush on this, is there?”
“No. The problem is not going to go away. It will be just as much a problem this time next year as it is now.”
“Well, so long is it’s not a rush deal like Fast World, that makes it a little more possible. I’m not going to be able to work on it anytime soon, since I’m just home for a couple of weeks to unwind and catch up with things at the office. I’m going to be heading out for the sandbox again sometime in the next couple of weeks and I don’t know how long I’m going to be this time. That means that about all I can do right now is to add it to my list of possible projects for sometime in the future.”
“That would be just fine,” Jennifer replied.
“I’ll nose around the office a little and see what kind of interest there is here. If I get to the right people at the right time I may be able to make a go project out of it, but it probably won’t be until after I’ve been back from the Gulf for a while the next time.”
It was not as enthusiastic a response as Jennifer had been hoping for, but at least it was a positive response. “I guess all I can say is that I’ll be ready when you’re ready.”
“I don’t know as much about it as I probably should, but it sounds interesting, especially if we can keep a balanced perspective. You’re going to have to educate me on this before we get too deep into it.”
“Honestly, I don’t know as much about it myself as I ought to know, but my friend can fill in the cracks pretty easily. She already knows I was going to bring this up to you, and she’s all for it.”
“That would probably help. Like I said, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk it up around the office using your name a little and see what kind of response I get. That’ll have to be the first step. I’ll try to keep in touch with you but I don’t know how easy that’ll be, and even if the right people are interested it could be months before we could get a real start on it.”
Their conversation went on for a couple more minutes, but it ran toward Brenda’s experiences in the Persian Gulf – wearing a helmet raised hell with her hair, she said, among other things. She was not crazy about the idea of heading back there, but in her business she had to go where the news was, which Jennifer could understand. Still, it seemed a little incongruous for this active, redheaded woman reporter to have been in the thick of things while Will had been several hundred miles to the south, bored stiff most of the time.
After the phone call ended, Jennifer sat back and thought about the conversation a little. All in all, it sounded like a pretty positive response although it was clear that Brenda couldn’t guarantee anything. Still, it was a response.
Once she’d mentally processed things a little she called Norma and filled her in on the conversation with Brenda. “I’ll be honest, I’d hoped that she’d hop on it real hard,” Jennifer told her friend. “But I guess she has other things on her desk, and that doesn’t surprise me.”
“Well, me either, but it’s not a total loss,” Norma replied. “It’s not all bad. If we want to use the story to be a springboard to getting the project going, it won’t hurt if it waits a few months, since we’re not ready with much of anything else yet.”
“Well, yeah, there is that,” Jennifer conceded. “You’re still looking at getting your doctorate before we really get into things, right?”
“I think so. It won’t mean anything to the girls we’re hoping to help, but it will give me more authority with some of the people we’ll have to work with. So I guess there’s no reason we can’t sit back a while and see if this gal comes through. I suppose if she turns us down, there are other avenues we could pursue with the same idea. There are a lot of places out there, and someone else might be interested.”
“I suppose, but under the circumstances I think Brenda and WNN ought to get first dibs just because of their doing Fast World. But I don’t think we want to wait too long. When you get right down to it, Fast World went pretty quickly. We shot the thing in a couple of days, part of it down at the hanger with Skyhook in the background, and part of it up at the Redlite. It was just a simple, straightforward interview, while if we put together the piece we want it’s going to mean a lot of different interviews in a lot of different places.”
“Right, and that could cause a problem. Let’s face it, most of the contacts I have are in the Phoenix area, except for some girls I met at the Redlite. Some of them might be able to put me onto some people in other places, but they’re still going to be mostly in the west. That’s not a problem that can’t be solved, but I ought to work on solving it. I mean, it would be nice to have a girl from, oh, New York as one of the people interviewed, but I don’t know anyone. That doesn’t mean I can’t find someone though.”
“Well, you’ve got a while to do it. Brenda doesn’t know when she’s going to be back from the Gulf and then when she’ll be able to get to it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t until after the first of the year.”
“In that time, I ought to be able to come up with someone,” Norma agreed. “But it makes me wonder if that Nanci friend of yours would be willing to be interviewed on camera.”
“I wouldn’t want to bet on it. She doesn’t like to talk about it much. It is so different from what she’s doing now that it’s hard to believe, and that doesn’t figure in her being a pre-seminary student and thinking about being a minister.”
“I keep thinking about that. She could be a really effective counselor to some girls, if no more reason than to show that they can get out of the ratholes and go on to make something of their lives.”
“You’re probably right on that but whether she would do it would be another question. But I don’t know how crazy she’d even be about doing an interview.”
“I suppose it could be done with her face obscured and her voice altered,” Norma replied.
“Well, she might,” Jennifer conceded. “But you have to wonder how doing it that way would play with Brenda.”
“That could be a problem, but it might be a problem with other girls, too. I guess all we can do is ask and keep our eyes open for someone else.”
“I don’t even think we can ask her until she gets back to school, and that’s another couple of months,” Jennifer pointed out. “She is very hard to contact in the summer.”
“Well, it’s not like it’s going to matter since it’s obviously going to be a while before the reporter could start shooting anyway, so we’ve got some time to work on it. Why don’t you figure on coming over to the house for dinner one of these nights? We can kick it around a little, along with some other things that need to be worked on.”
“I could, I suppose,” Jennifer replied, “but the next month is going to be tough on my schedule. I know Will is going to be back in the states sometime in the next few days, and that means I’m going to have more important things to do. The problem is that I don’t know when, since he went over there as an individual on temporary duty, rather than as part of a unit.”
“That makes things a little more complicated,” Norma agreed. “How long do you think it’s going to be before things settle down?”
“I don’t know yet. He wants to take some leave as early as he can, but he may not be able to, or so he tells me. If he can’t, I’m going to be spending the next few weekends in Mississippi.”
“We’ll get to do it sometime, then. I’m going to be gone for a few days in early August myself.”
“Are you going to be taking a vacation?”
“Sort of. I decided to take the opportunity to spend some time at the Redlite. I haven’t been there since February, so it’ll be a vacation for me. It’ll be good to get my mind off dissertation writing for a while and enjoy some simpler things. I’m hoping I can make a few contacts while I’m up there, and some of them might work into this TV thing.”
“Is Stephanie going with you?”
“No, she’s decided she likes being a stock runner this summer, and frankly I think I’m just as glad.”
“I guess I am, too. If she’s going to do it, I think she really has to want to do it, and the couple of times I talked to her I didn’t get that message.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. To tell you the truth, I’m not too sure how much I really want to do it any more either. But if we get this project going there aren’t going to be many more opportunities for me, so I suppose I ought to grab them while I can.”
